


Communicating With Cavemen For Dummies, by Ishigami Senku

by wugging_out



Category: Dr. STONE (Anime), Dr. STONE (Manga)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Crack, Crack Treated Seriously, Dr. STONE reimagined by a linguistics major, Gen, Humor, Language Barrier, Languages and Linguistics, Linguistics, No Beta We Die Like Byakuya
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-07
Updated: 2021-02-28
Packaged: 2021-03-13 00:34:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,126
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29269587
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wugging_out/pseuds/wugging_out
Summary: When Ishigami Byakuya left his descendants behind to help his adopted son, he didn’t realize that by the time Senku woke up, he and the inhabitants of Ishigami Village wouldn’t be able to understand each other.Luckily, since Senku is Senku, he’s going to turn the situation to his advantage.(a.k.a. what happens when you introduce linguistic realism to dr. stone, bc no language is gonna beexactly the sameafter 3,700 years. i love dr. stone but that’s just not how languages work, dude.)
Relationships: Asagiri Gen & Ishigami Senkuu, Chrome & Ishigami Senkuu, Ishigami Senku & Kohaku
Comments: 14
Kudos: 89





	1. Realize when you’ve become the Japanese equivalent of Beowulf in the modern world, idiot

**Author's Note:**

> you know how _Beowulf_ is incomprehensible to modern english speakers? that was english just a little over 1000 years ago. so what do you think would happen to japanese after 3,700 years?? i'll tell you one thing, it's not gonna be the same language that senku is speaking when he wakes up.
> 
> i'm not gonna go into detail in the story about how the language has changed bc (1) most ppl probs don't care and (2) i don't know enough about current sound changes in japanese to make a good guess, and (3) if i was gonna put that in the story i'd need it to be perfect and i'd be so worried about it that i'd never actually end up writing anything. all you need to know for the story is that the japanese-descended language that kohaku and the villagers speak and the modern japanese that senku and tsukasa speak are not mutually intelligible.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so usually i'm the kind of person who finishes writing a story before posting it anywhere but something came over me the other day and i finally started writing this thing i've been thinking about for a while, and season 2 of the anime has me so excited i wanted to post it immediately, so we're trying something new. but i'm a slow and sporadic writer so who knows when updates will come :/

Tsukasa pauses. He turns his head. “Rear right, fifty-seven meters.”

No response.

“Mm. Yes, you. The one who’s been following me quietly for the past two minutes.”

He turns more fully, glaring into the trees. “Who are you.”

Silence. Then a rustle of grasses. The measured _bokkuri, bokkuri_ of footwear clacking on stone.

A girl comes around the tree. _Blue eyes_ , Tsukasa notices. She’s young, blonde, wearing _okobo_ * made out of what looks like gray clay. She’s carrying a bouquet of flowers, a soft smile playing on her lips. Where did she come from? _Did Taiju and the others just revive her? Or are there other ways for people to be revived?_

She stops three meters away from him. Tilts her head, huffs an amused sound.

And then the flowers fall away, revealing the knives underneath.

She charges, striking upward; he blocks her with his stone spear, pressing down. “That’s not nice,” he observes mildly. Shouldn’t you say ‘nice to meet you’ first?”

The girl snaps something, and the sounds jumble in his hears. A wordless cry of rage, he thinks at first, but then she says something else, and still without making sense. She disengages with his spear and attacks again. Tsukasa simply blocks and dodges, turning thoughts over in his mind. There’s nothing wrong with his ears, so the reason he cannot understand her must be a problem with her words. A speech disorder? 

The train of the thought is cut off when she rebounds off his block and turns it into momentum for a flipping kick, her _okobo_ just missing his face.

Tsukasa dodges and falls back a few steps. _Impossible_ , he thinks. _She’s too young to have such skill. There’s no way the martial arts community wouldn’t have heard of her. Who is she?_

They’re in a standoff. The girl talks again, more of those incomprehensible sounds pouring out of her mouth. It sounds like a foreign language of some sort, but they’re still in Japan. It’s possible that a tourist was revived somehow, or that she was washed to Japan’s shores from someone else over the course of thousands of years—

She charges again, stabs with her knife, and Tsukasa catches it between two fingers. Looking down at her, he asks again, “Who are you?”

Her brows furrow. Past the anger, she looks confused. She replies in that same jumbled speech. With both their movements paused for the moment, he takes the time to examine her more closely. She is wearing a purple dress, and her shield is dyed bright red with intricate designs on it. Surely, if she had just recently been revived by Senku and Taiju or by Taiju and Yuzuriha, there would have been no time to procure such a bright dye and set it in cloth. Those clothes and that shield had been made a while ago, and great time and effort must have been put into them.

The picture starts to come together. If she had revived recently on her own, not only would she not have such bright materials, but she would also be desperate to find a companion to share the burden of survival with. She would approach him as an ally instead of an enemy, or she would have gone to join Taiju and the other. This was not someone with nowhere to go.

“You must be the child of someone who revived,” Tsukasa realizes. “There must be a village of some kind, a settlement of people.”

If there were other people around, that might complicate his plans… but Tsukasa is no doubt stronger than them. He could rule over them easily. He could kill them easily. There’s no reason to attack them, he decides. _My immediate goal is to return to the cave. I need to secure the miracle water before Taiju and Yuzuriha, who now now how to make gunpowder._

His mind made up, Tsukasa tugs the girl toward him. “This is goodbye,” he says.

He knocks her down, fells a tree on her, and leaves.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> * _[Okobo](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Okobo)_ is the closest equivalent i could find to the kind of shoes kohaku and the other villagers wear, but _okobo_ are apparently usually made out of wood and mostly worn by girls… let me know if you know a better term!
> 
> haha i love tsukasa. i usually write in past tense but somehow writing him turned into present tense and i didn't even realize until i was editing the chapter to post it XD
> 
> next time: senku struggles. how do you ask someone to make a vital decision when they can't even understand you??


	2. Language barriers are a pain to handle in ethics

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> apparently i was excited enough from posting to churn out another chapter. this is very unusual for me, i'll have you know. but i rlly rlly rlly wanna get closer to explaining the language situation here, so :3
> 
> also, thanks to tsukasa, this fic now has to be in present tense to be consistent... senku was with the plan at the beginning of the chapter, but i had to correct myself later on (^_^;)

If a tree falls down in a forest and there’s no one around to hear it, does it make noise?

The key to this question is whether you consider “noise” to be the same as “vibration,” or whether you think “noise” is only the way the brain interprets vibration.

But really, that philosophical puzzle isn’t important at the moment, because a tree just fell down in a forest and Senku was around to hear it. The only questions that matter right now are _how_ and _why_.

The how is obvious: only Tsukasa could have knocked down an entire tree like that.

The why is equally obvious: Tsukasa was fighting someone, and it wasn’t Taiju. Which means that it was the person who raised the smoke signal earlier.

So Senku runs.

Is it the safest decision? Definitely not—Tsukasa could still be there, after all, and Senku is supposed to be dead right now. He might be about to expose himself not even half an hour after starting his con. But if his potential ally is in trouble right now, he has no choice but to go.

And it’s a good thing he does, because his ally is _trapped under a giant tree_. Tsukasa couldn’t have just knocked the tree down as collateral in a fight, _no_ , he had to use it pin down his opponent! It’s a very Tsukasa-like thing to do, Senku thinks grimly, once he gets over his shock.

The girl looks just as surprised to see Senku as Senku is surprised to see her. Then exclaims something in a foreign language, and Senku’s heart sinks. The situation just went from dangerous to grim.

He rushes down the incline to the tree. “Stop talking!” he demands, even though he knows she won’t understand him. Hopefully the tone will get across. He immediately sets to examining the tree, measuring the gap underneath it, assessing its weight. It takes barely any time at all to come up with two plans, but the person who needs to make the decision won’t be able to understand him when he explains.

Senku turns to her anyway. “Can you hold out until evening? If you’re at your limit, I’ll take a gamble and blow the tree up with the little gunpowder I have left. But if you can hold on—it’ll take forever, but I’ll save you, ten billion percent.”

The girl blinks at him uncomprehendingly.

Senku can feel the frustration bubbling up inside him. “Normally, you’d be the only one who could make the decision. But if I can’t get your consent one way or another, I’ll have to figure out for myself whether you’re good to hold on. Sorry if you don’t want me touching you, but this is an emergency!” 

Without waiting for a response, he leans over the tree and gets a good look at the crack in the earth that the girl has fortunately fallen into. Her knees draw up as looks, which is a good sign—there probably hasn’t been any damage to her spine. Next her turns to her torso. Her rib cage is stuck, but her belly rises and falls in the gap under the tree. It looks like she’s breathing fine.

Lastly he turns to her face, examining her pupils. He doesn’t have a flashlight to test dilation, but when he puts his hand over her face to block the sun, her pupils widen slightly, and when he takes his hand away, they shrink. Furthermore, even though she looks confused, she seems fully conscious. Probably no brain injury.

It’s pointless to talk to her, but the silence around him is deafening. “Is your body okay?” he asks again.

This time, something shifts in her expression. It looks like wonder. “Body… good,” she says, although the words are heavily accented in a way that Senku has never heard before.

Relief washes through Senku. Not only can the girl apparently understand some simple Japanese words, but her condition is stable and relatively safe. That means Senku can save her.

* * *

When Senku lifts the tree, the girl says something in that other language, sounding quietly amazed. Then she sits up and turns to him. “Thank you,” she says clumsily, smiling. She points at herself. “Kohaku!” She points at him. “Liked!”

_Ugh, I don’t like the sound of that_ , thinks Senku as the girl stands up and fixes her hair. “We just met, and she’s already in love? In this state of emergency?” he grumbles.

The girl scowls and points at him again. “Love, no!” she yells, then devolves into her own language. “Liked person!” she tries again.

She sounds so outraged at the idea that Senku relaxes. “Oh, I appreciate it then,” Senku responds with a grin. “Nothing is as illogical or trouble-prone as relationships. But more importantly—how do you know Japanese?”

“Japanese,” she repeats, as if it’s a familiar word. “Sister!”

“Your sister knows Japanese? That’ll make things a lot easier!” Senku cheers. “Take me to her!”

The girl scowls at his enthusiasm. “Sister sick,” she says glumly. “Village… no cure.”

_How troublesome_. Senku can’t have his interpreter die. His next step is clear, then.

“Take me to your sister,” Senku says again. “I’ll cure her, a billion percent.”

Kohaku’s face brightens instantly! “Cure, yes!” Then her smile turns blood thirsty and she pulls out a knife. “No cure… you die.”

Senku makes something between a smirk and grimace, sweat beading on his face. _No pressure._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> surprise! kohaku can actually understand him a teeny tiny bit. this was one possibility out of a few that i thought of, and it was the easier one, so i decided to take mercy on myself, my readers, and the characters by using it instead of the world where absolutely no one in ishigami village knows any modern japanese >:3 which would have been a lot of fun, but also would've taken more time to plan and write.
> 
> i'll explain more about the situation later, but here's a preview:  
> -Ruri is the only one who can kinda speak modern japanese, which has to do with the 100 stories she had to memorize  
> -kohaku knows a few words of modern japanese from ruri  
> -nobody else knows a lick of modern japanese
> 
> that being said, it should already be clear that bc of the language barrier, the character dynamics are gonna be a little different for know (kohaku hasn't realized how rude senku rlly is) and the plot pacing is gonna be slightly faster (senku already knows about ruri being sick and already has a reason to save her).
> 
> also, a little side note: i had to learn about ethics in doing experiments recently (tho linguistic studies are pretty much as low risk as you can get, having consent to handle human data is still rlly important), and it made me realize just how important ethics are to senku, and how much it would frustrate him to not be able to communicate with kohaku well in that emergency situation. senku was basically asking for her to consent to either of the things he proposed to save her life, which both had their own risks. i have a feeling that consent is rlly important to senku :') since it was an emergency, if kohaku hadn't recognized the word for "body" and realized that he was asking if she was okay, senku would have had to make a very hard decision without her consent and he woudn't have been happy about it. luckily i took mercy on him >:3


	3. Words are just stand-ins for things in the world

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> omg peeps i have been BLOWN AWAY by all the support this has gotten. i am SO SO GLAD that i'm not the only one who was bothered by the huge-ass language plot-hole! (´•̥̥̥ω•̥̥̥`) i feel kinda bad that it took me so long to post another chapter but i warned you that i'm a slow writer... *hides face* anyway here it is!
> 
> also we're approaching week 9 in the college quarter so pls pray for my survival, i probably won't write or post again until after finals

On the way to Kohaku’s village, they stop at a natural hot spring. Kohaku retrieves a large jar that was stashed nearby and fills it. “Sister,” is all she says as explanation, but Senku can fill in the gaps. He eyes the jar critically. It’s a little less than fifty liters, definitely not enough for a bath. She must have to fill it several times.

Kohaku stumbles, unsurprisingly—she’s still recovering from her fight with Tsukasa. Senku catches the jar with hand before it falls. “Give it here,” he orders, holding out his hands for the jar. Fifty liters of water is fifty kilograms. He can definitely carry that.

* * *

He can’t carry it. Time to use science.

* * *

Luckily, the makeshift cart avoids crashing until they’ve made it within sight of their destination: a small village situated on two islands linked to each other and to the mainland by bridges. Objectively it’s tiny and rustic, but it has _people_. For half a year Senku was on his own, and then for another half year with only Taiju. He can’t help being amazed.

“How many people?” Senku asks. During the time he’s been traveling with Kohaku, not quite twenty-four hours yet, he’s started to get an idea of what words she knows. They’re mostly simple nouns—body, person, sister, village—and some adjectives—good, bad, liked, sick, dangerous.

Kohaku says something in her own language, and then: “Forty, strong. More, weak.” She points into the distance. “More villages, more people.”*

Compared to what Senku has worked with so far, forty is plenty. It’s nice to know about the other villages, but Senku doesn’t imagine that he’ll see them in a long while. _It will be difficult enough figuring out how to work with this one village, there’s no need to bring another one into the equation for now_ , he thinks.

Senku returns to analyzing the village in front of him as they approach it. _Kohaku and the villages probably don’t know anything about modern technology_ , he notes, remembering Kohaku’s wonder at the pulleys he used and the cart he’d made out of them later. _So this is a settlement of revived people. Which means there must have been a first generation. For example, hundreds of years ago, there might have been a first-generation science man like me who made a revival fluid. There’s no sign of revival fluid or any kind of science being passed down here, though, and even if they started speaking Japanese—as Kohaku’s familiarity with it suggests—the language has clearly changed along the way. Where did these people come from?_

Senku only comes out of his musings when, as they approach the gate, Kohaku has to prevent the guards from spearing him. 

With the lioness protecting him, Senku watches as the three villagers start to converse in low and serious tones. It doesn’t look like the conversation is going well, and it only gets worse when Kohaku puts on a thinly veiled sneer and starts speaking in a lazily threatening voice. It’s clear that a fight is about to break out, but it’ll be a bad introduction to the village if Kohaku beating up the guards is the only reason he’s allowed in.

Time for Senku to deescalate the situation with science. He turns to the jar of hot water and takes out his soap.

“You’re so short tempered,” he says dryly. That gets the guards’ attention on him. While he starts building up a lather with the soap, he continues, “And you make such a nasty face.” Then he lifts his hand in front of his mouth and blows a stream of bubbles.

The guards are clearly freaked out by the move. The dark-haired one strikes at the bubbles with his spear and then jolts back like a startled cat when they pop, and the light-haired one lifts his arms aimlessly towards the bubbles, his eyes wide and mouth gaping.

“So that’s the level you’re at, huh?” Senku observes with a dead-fish expression. It’s a bit of a pathetic display, but it’s also an opportunity. He grins fiercely. “I guess I’m taking all of this, then. I’m going to get all forty of you on my side with science. _Sosoruze, kore wa_.”

At this point, the light-haired suddenly starts running and screaming. Senku would be content to just watch their confusion for a while, but just then a new voice speaks up behind them. He turns to find another villager—but this one doesn’t look scared or confused by the bubbles. 

The stranger strikes a pose, seemingly introducing himself. Of course it doesn’t mean anything to Senku, but Kohaku lets out a huff of satisfaction beside him. She says something in her own language, then remembers that Senku can’t understand and flounders for a moment. Finally she just points at the newcomer and says, “This person!”

Out of context it would be a completely meaningless utterance, but Senku understands: Kohaku thinks that this person could be their ally.

The newcomer says something forcefully to the guards, then pops the bubbles with an unimpressed look on his face. The three villagers converse a bit more, and then the stranger whirls around to make some dramatic proclamation to Senku. Kohaku helpfully boils it down by pointing at the other and saying, “Chrome.”

Chrome leads them all to a building outside the village where there is a fire burning. He stands on the opposite side of the fire facing the rest of the group and cackles, yell something out, and then tosses something into the fire.

Immediately the flames leap up and turn yellow, and Kohaku and the guards gasp and cry out with surprise and confusion. Senku feels his eyes widen, but his is a different kind of surprise. That was a flame test reaction with sodium. It was a science-classroom parlor trick—but this person from the stone world had never been in a science classroom.

Next Chrome throws some kind of copper (maybe copper sulfate) into the fire to turn it blue-green, then sulfur to turn it purple. Kohaku and the guards react with just as much surprise to these colors, meaning that flame test reactions were not something learned about in the village. Chrome must have discovered them on his own.

Senku opens his mouth to explain what Chrome had done, but he closes it again. No one would understand him. For a moment he feels frustration build, but he shrugs it off. Frustration never helped anything. _Calm down, think rationally. How would you explain something like this to someone who can’t understand a word you say, not to mention they probably don’t know what sodium and copper and sulfur are—_

The train of thought cuts off as Senku realizes where he went wrong. _Why do I need to explain it at all? Science doesn’t exist in the realm of words, it exists in the world. Words are only the way we represent the world without pointing at the literal thing. But I have the literal thing right in front of me here. I don’t have to explain a thing._

_I can show it._

Senku grins excitedly, the wicked smile that sent his classmates running back in the modern world. He reaches into his hip pouch and pulls out a small jar of calcium carbonate left over from the seashell gathering, uncorks it and shakes a bit into the fire. The calcium causes the fire to turn a bright orange-red.

Kohaku and the guards exclaim again, but Senku is more interested in the shock that takes over Chrome’s face. The other gapes for a moment, then gestures frantically and races up into his house. There’s some clanging and pounding, before he emerges with a large brown sphere which he rubs vigorously. Finally, panting, he brings his finger right in front of the light-haired guard’s nose and shocks him with static electricity.

“A sulfur ball static generator, huh,” Senku says to himself, striding over to take the sphere from Chrome. “That’s supposed to be a 17th-century invention—not that you’d know that, Chrome.” With a smirk, he picks up his flag of science from the ground and rubs the leather over the ball until his hair sticks out straight. Then he shocks Chrome with ten billion times more power than.

While Chrome falls over, Kohaku asks something in a curious tone, and Senku tosses her the ball. By the time Chrome stands up, Kohaku and the light-haired guard are touching the ball with their hair puffed up. Chrome tries to retrieve his sulfur ball, but Kohaku twirls smoothly out of the way, and Chrome crashes to the ground again.

Senku smirks at their antics, feeling like he’s in a child’s science experiment class. It’s primitive compared to the heights of modern science, but in this stone world…

He turns to Chrome’s hut, which is undoubtedly full of all kinds of materials that Chrome knows do things, even if he doesn’t know why. _Look at this, Tsukasa,_ he thinks. _Even if you kill me, even if you kill anyone, even if you reset science… there’s always someone who will rediscover all the things we can do with the materials around us. And the shiny monkeys will inevitably create a technological civilization again._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *yes, i invented more people. you’re telling me that in 3,700 years the descendants only grew to forty-something ppl? i'm no expert on population growth but i think _3,700 years_ is long enough to have more than that. so more ppl. it’s a canon divergence au i can do what i want, fk u. (also ginro mentions that the village would banish criminals, so it makes sense for there to be other settlements, and the existence of other villages would be more justification for the strict “no outsiders” policy.) the other villages won’t show up at all, but the ishigami village ppl know about them and have very occasional contact w/ them. the different villages speak different dialects, some of which are mutually intelligible and some of which aren’t, which gives them at least some experience with language differences.
> 
> Okay so about senku & chrome's different interaction here. just like with kohaku, their dynamic is gonna be different to start with, but this time it's bc senku can't understand what chrome says. i get the feeling in canon that when chrome introduces himself as a sorcerer, senku gets certain expectations which lead to him being underwhelmed with chrome's "sorcery" to start with. in this world, tho, senku doesn't really know that he's being challenged to a sorcery battle and only knows that kohaku thinks chrome's an ally, so he's a little more open-minded, and when he sees chrome do things that go against deductions he just made about everyone in the village being ignorant about science, he's a little quicker to realize the significance of what chrome has figured out for himself. so that's why senku isn't as dismissive here.
> 
> oh and hey, if anyone's interested about all the colors you can get from flame test reactions, check [this](https://www.thoughtco.com/how-flame-test-colors-are-produced-3963973) out.
> 
> next time: medicine-production planning starts. how will senku get everyone to follow his instructions?

**Author's Note:**

> i just made a [tumblr](https://wugging-out.tumblr.com/), so come ask me linguistics questions or yell at me about dr. stone or any other anime or donghua or whatever \o/


End file.
